Infantem Puella
by PoisonBones
Summary: A father is neither an anchor to hold us back, nor a sail to take us there, but a guiding light whose love shows us the way. -Anonymous Written for the Makapu Moose Lions Pro Bending Circuit.


**Colors:  
Red- Determination - To be a good father  
Green- Life - The life of the child  
Purple- Pride - In the child**

 **Prompts: Alcohol (smell), No Dialogue**

 **Words: 3000 exactly**

To say that Ghazan was unprepared to learn that the woman he'd been sleeping with for the last month was pregnant was an understatement.

Though he shouldn't have been surprised, neither had even thought to use any form of protection.

Then the surprise passed, and he had dropped to his knees in the dirt and pressed an ear to her lower abdomen. He had always found it silly to see men do it, to think that you would be able to hear an infant in the womb. But now, in that very position, he knelt with his ear pressed to her flesh praying for a little sound, just a little indication that it was healthy and alive and beautiful.

The visits became more frequent, and less physical. She moved in with him, in his little cobbled house at the end of the town, with two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, and sitting room. The basement had been fashioned himself; he had hollowed out a room about fifty feet underneath the house, only accessible by earth bending the floor open to the stairway.

Her stomach grew with each month, and by the time Ghazan realized that he was scared to death of fatherhood, it was too late.

* * *

The child was pressed into his arms with little care, and he didn't have time to even look at the infant before the news was presented.

She was dead, having had severe hemorrhaging within the third part of the seven hour labor.

The doctors shoved some supplies into his hands and sent him on his not-so-merry way. He was in shock. Dead? Neither of them had even considered the possibility that she might die. It had been all cheery impatience for their child to come. He was sure that, as the mother, she would have wanted to feed the infant from her breast and rock it to sleep. The doctor said that she had gotten to hold the baby, just for a moment that she cherished in death, but Ghazan could not see that moment as a gift. All he saw was a curse, a lie, a little taste of the life she would never get to live.

* * *

It was not until the next day, bathed in the morning sun, all hopes of a peaceful sleep thrown out the window that he finally gazed down upon her.

She was tiny, swaddled in green, all wrinkly and squirming and red. Though, even through the baby fat, he could tell what she looked like. Her skin was dark, and a full head of thick black hair crowned her. Her fingers wrapped around his right ring finger and squeezed.

Ghazan took one long look at the sun, before reverting back to the small bundle in his arms. Her eyes were open, gazing up at him with curiosity. They stared at one another for a moment, as if sizing each other up. And then her little eyes widened, her grip grew tighter, and-

She spit up on him.

He decided to name her Ting.

* * *

It was a fine morning, in early spring, when Ghazan rolled over and found something to be strange. He could not put his finger on it though, and he laid there for a half hour trying to figure just what it was about this morning that was so different from the last. The birds were chirping outside the window, and a narrow slant of sunlight shined along the foot of the bed. He could hear the neighbors making breakfast and a cart squeak by on the road outside. In fact it was so quiet he could hear his own heartbeat.

Oh.

Ghazan leapt out of his bed and launched himself into the room across the hall. He stuck his head over the side of the crib, filled with dread. But what he found was not his daughter laying stiff and cold in her crib. What he found was his daughter laying there, warm and squishy and very much alive, making soft gurgling noises as she slept soundly.

Huh.

Well it was about time.

Ghazan checked the clock on the changing stand to find that it read exactly six twenty two. Perhaps he could rest just a little while longer, until seven at the most. But alas, as he crept away from the crib, her little eyes opened, and she began to wail.

* * *

Ghazan was not sure why he was so shocked to discover his little girl's treasure. He had suspected it for a while now; his tea cups and bowls miraculously sliding off of tables and countertops, but it didn't keep him from swooping her up high when she revealed it.

An indignant little thing, Ting had been that morning. He'd been frustrated with her at first, but all of that faded when she put her little three year old foot down and reduced the earthen kitchen shelf to a pile of dust, stones, and molten rock.

She blinked up at it dumbly, before cracking the widest grin a child could bear and giving herself a little whoop. Ghazan returned the earth shelf to its former glory, but he took the little bits of lava and gathered them in his hands, solidifying them into small glowing orbs. She touched them tenderly, her face filled with awe and fascination.

They started training the next day, and Ghazan was proud of his little lava bender.

* * *

She was seven when she requested a membership to the Earth Rumble. He allowed it, taking her to every match, standing on the ground next to the ring, sitting her up on his shoulders so that she could detect every last detail.

She kept souvenirs in her room on her bookshelf. Some would say it was unhygienic, others would call it vile, but Ghazan did not. If Ting wanted to stack broken teeth and bloody rocks on her shelf so be it, as long as she didn't come with any such injuries herself. At least, not until she was older.

* * *

It was the early afternoon of a hot summer day when she vomited in the hallway. He cleaned it up and took her temperature. Finding that she had a fever, he put her down in her bed and read her books all day and night. He found himself waiting on her more than he ever had before in one run. He cleaned her messes, held her hair back, brought her water, bathed her face, it was quite exhausting. He began to get irritated when her fever rose and she began to require his constant attention, barely trusting her enough to let her slip out of his sight long enough to make a sandwich, in fear that he would come back and find her no longer breathing.

However, when he caught it too, the sat on opposite ends of the couch and listened to all the Earth Rumble matches they were missing. She got better first, obviously, and he found it quite amusing to watch her walk around, back straight like a pin, mouth pressed into a line, trying to be professional in the art of healthcare. She had no idea what she was doing, and to prevent either of them acquiring food poisoning, he made her sit still until he felt better.

* * *

He stood in the crowd and cheered like a wild man as Ting swung and outward block forward, thrusting a wall of rock into her opponent. He had applied Ting for Earth Rumble matches when she was nine and a half. Six months later, on the night of her tenth birthday, he watched her compete in her first match.

She made Earth Rumble Champion at ten years old.

He was so proud of his baby girl.

* * *

Oolong tea, a bit of a violent taste if you asked Ghazan. It fit his reaction.

A spray of the brown droplets spewed out in front of him, not a millisecond after Ting asked him where babies came from. His outburst, followed by a bout of rough hacking, subdued after a moment, and Ting took his silence as an offering to repeat the question. Ghazan took her to the kitchen table and set a fresh pot of tea, pouring the oolong down the sink and replacing it with mint, Ting's favorite.

He did not sprinkle any sugar.

He thought it went rather well, he explained the basics, and got into more depth when she pressed for more delicate information. He blushed a bit though, when she asked him if that was what he had done with her mother in order to make her.

They ate dinner in silence, both retiring early. Ghazan lay in his bed staring at the ceiling, reviewing the information that he had just inserted into his daughters brain, when the door opened, and his eleven year old climbed in next to him. She claimed it was a nightmare, but he suspected that she was experimenting with the feel of sharing a bed with someone.

* * *

The screech that echoed through the house could have busted some ones eardrums from a close proximity. Ghazan dropped his spoon on the table and practically jumped out of his chair. He raced down the hallway to the bathroom, where Ting had been taking a bath, and banged on the door. Ting yanked the door open, clad in only a towel, looking as though she were about to cry. She pulled him in with fearful eyes and pointed at the bathwater. At first, he didn't understand, and then it hit him.

He drained the bathtub and brought her clean clothes. He showed her the tricks he had learned from P'li and Ming Hua, before sitting her down on the toilet, choosing the edge of the tub for himself, and explaining what was happening to her body. She did end up crying, from hormones or shock he didn't know, but she ran to her room, yelling about how stupid her body was, and cried.

She climbed into bed with him for the second time in the year that night, snuggling closer to him and telling him that her stomach hurt. He rubbed her back and whispered in soothing tones, telling her that it would be gone by the end of the week, and that she just needed to hang in there.

The next day at Earth Rumble, she broke a boy's nose for saying she had anger issues.

* * *

It was late in the autumn time, and Ghazan sat on the couch, waiting patiently for his fourteen year old daughter to come home. He had laid down for a nap, his accumulating age beginning to take a toll on his energy levels, and he had overslept, missing the time for Ting's match. Apparently she had thought it a good idea not to wake him.

And when she stumbled across the thresh hold at half past two, smelling vaguely of wine and sake, with an undertone of cactus juice, he dropped his head into his hands and groaned. He remembered the many times that he had given his sister such troubles. He had ignored her, but he now realized her frustrations with putting an inebriated teenager to sleep and trying to think of a fair way to punish them the next morning.

He woke her early and made her train in the cold. He was merciful, really. His sister would've banged on a pot.

* * *

On Ting's sixteenth birthday, he took her for a drink himself. They went to the pub, receiving free pints as a birthday gift, and talked. Not like father and daughter, or even logically what so ever. They spoke as friends that night, without a care in the world.

He ended up telling her the stories of the Red Lotus. What had happened, when it happened, and why he was the only one left alive.

Ghazan went a little off the top that night, and Ting took her father home, the smell of alcohol burning her nose hairs. She took off his shoes and made him drink water, before tucking him in like a child and kissing his forehead goodnight while he drunkenly mumbled an old lullaby to himself.

Ting didn't complain though. She knew that her father would have done the exact same thing for her.

She dreamt of dragons that night, big long red ones, sailing through the air. She dreamt of ice giants, guarding metal cells, cages suspended above volcanoes, and rafts floating on water. She dreamt of molten lava and hot rocks, electricity coursing through blue water like vibrant, deadly synapses. She dreamt of her father, crushing himself with boulders.

The next day, while her father recovered, Ting went to the library and did some research on the Red Lotus. It was disquieting, seeing her father's youthful face in a mug shot. The other three though, they intrigued her. Those were her father's best friends, and now they were gone.

She had the librarian print out copies of the pictures, and Ting added them to the small autograph book she kept beneath her bed, labeling them Aunt Ming Hua, Aunt P'li, and Uncle Zaheer.

* * *

Ghazan believed that no child should move out until they were at least twenty.

So when eighteen year old Ting came to him with a deed, requesting his signature, his stomach twisted and he swallowed audibly. Ting sat him down and told why she wanted to go. She wanted to make well on her own, move on to bigger things, and maybe, just maybe, have a boy over without him threatening to castrate them. He said he would think about it, and they both went to the respective bedrooms and locked themselves in.

He planned to be stubborn, say no until she completed a list of impossible tasks. Maybe even keep her prisoner of sorts; now that would be interesting. Anything but signing that deed and letting his baby girl move into a strange apartment with a strange smell where she could have strange people over.

….. But when the morning rolled around, Ting woke to find the deed laid crisply down on her nightstand, her father's shaky signature still drying at the bottom.

* * *

It was dark and rainy, and Ghazan ran anyway. He ran until his lungs burned and his legs threatened to give out from underneath him, and he kept running. It wasn't until he burst through the healer's door located Ting that he stopped, and he stood there huffing and puffing, dripping mud and dirty water all over the floor.

It was dark and rainy, and Ting had been walking home after her Earth Rumble match, when a drunk driver swung his Sato Mobile to the far side of the road, gliding up over the curb, and smashing his twenty year old daughter into the windshield.

Face bruised, leg broken, left arm mangled beyond repair. They set her leg and cleaned her face. They cut her left arm open, removing fragments of split and splintered bones, sliding metal rods in their place. She woke rather woozy, and the healer took her slightly inept state as the time to give the report. She would be fine, her leg would heal in eight weeks, her face would not scar, and her arm would be working as normally as ever within the year, but she may never bend again.

She may never bend again.

 _She may never bend again._

Ghazan held his baby girl in his arms as she wept like a child.

* * *

The earth shook as Ting stood in her stance, feet planted firmly on the ground, perspiration dripping from her brow. Ghazan watched from behind her as the lava began to seep forth out of the earth, glowing red, burning hot. The few patches of grass that had survived the rigorous training she had endured over the last two years melted into the liquid rock.

And then the lava seeped back into the earth, leaving a fine coat of black ash on the ground in its wake. Ting stood still, before launching herself at her father. Ghazan intercepted the hug halfway, stumbling back a few steps.

 _Suck it healers,_ Ghazan thought as he embraced her, _My baby's bending again._

Ghazan was so proud of his baby girl.

* * *

He met the boy several times. He didn't like him. He smiled too much, and he always put his hand too low on Tings back.

But Ting loved him, and he made Ting happy.

That was good enough for him.

* * *

Wedding bells were always so annoying. Ghazan remember hearing them as a child, playing loud and clear over the town. Ghazan just wished they would shut up.

His baby girl looked like an angel, all dressed up in her emerald green gown. Ting smiled at him, and her face shone with a light he had never seen before. He held out his arm, and she placed her hand in the crook of his elbow, before leaning over and kissing his cheek. She told him she loved him, and not to be scared, because that man at the end of the aisle would always take care of her. Ghazan believed her, and he silently swore to hold that man at the end of the aisle to that.

Because if he didn't, he would find his face on the wrong end of the dirt.

* * *

His name was Tycho.

He was placed in Ghazan's arms with much care, and Ghazan looked down on his grandson with awe.

He was tiny, swaddled in green, all wrinkly and squirming and red. Though, even through the baby fat, he could tell what he looked like. His skin was dark, and a full head of thick black hair crowned him. His fingers wrapped around Ghazan's right ring finger and squeezed.

Ghazan took pride in his family, in his daughter and son-in-law and grandson.

Ghazan was so proud of his little lava bender, his little champion. His baby girl.


End file.
